Further Tales of the City (6 page)

I
T WAS NOON WHEN EMMA BROUGHT IN THE MAI TAIS WITH
the morning mail. Frannie Halcyon was still propped up in bed, her peach satin sleep mask askew across her forehead, like the goggles on an aviator who had died in a dogfight.

“Mornin’, Miss Frannie.”

“Set it on the dresser, please, Emma dear.”

“Yes’m.”

“Miss Singleton didn’t call back, did she?”

“No’m.”

“What about Miss Moonmeadow?”

Emma scowled. “No’m.”

“You needn’t look at me like that. I am fully aware of your feelings about Miss Moonmeadow.”

Emma fluffed her mistress’ quilt almost violently. “Mr. Edgar would turn over in his grave if he knew you was seeing that witch woman.”

Frannie sighed wearily and removed the sleep mask. “Emma, she is a
psychic.
Please don’t call her a witch woman. It distresses me so.”

“She takin’ yo’ money. I know that.”

“She keeps me in touch …”

“Oh Lord, Miss Frannie …”

“She keeps me in touch with my only child, Emma, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. Is that understood, Emma?”

Emma pouted, unrepentant, then skulked to the window and jerked open the Roman shades. She kept her back turned to her mistress.

“Don’t you see?” Frannie asked in a gentler tone. “Miss DeDe was all I had left. Miss Moonmeadow gives me hope that … that Miss DeDe is still alive.”

Emma walked for the door, rigid as a poker. “It was them kinda folks that killed her.”

The mail offered little in the way of refreshment: a bill from Magnin’s, an invitation to Vita Keating’s Italian Earthquake Relief concert, a thank-you note from that Giroux woman, and a chain letter from Dodie Rosekrans.

This is the Socialite Chain Letter. Break it and you invite risk to life, limb, and personal or inherited wealth. Chrissie Goulandris broke the chain, and a week later broke not one but two nails on the evening of Helene Rochas’ Red Ball in Geneva. Ariel de Ravenel broke the chain, and broke a collarbone at Gstaad the same day. Betty Catroux broke the chain, and three weeks later her two-year-old Asti had to be quarantined in a tiny kennel in Managua for eight months without cohabitation privileges. DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!

Mail six copies of this letter to friends whom you KNOW to be serious minded when it comes to fun. Add your name to the bottom of the list and place your return address on the envelope. In six weeks you will have 1,280 new addresses. Ideal for planning international get-togethers. P.S. Husbands who try to interfere with the chain will also be hit by bad luck. Paquita Paquin’s husband threw her copy into the wastebasket
and a week later his foundation lost its tax exempt status in Argentina. THE FORTUNE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN!!!!

D.D. Ryan

Marina Cicogna

Delfina Ratazzi

Dominique Schlumberger de Menil

Nan Kempner

Paloma Picasso

L.oulou Klossowski

Marina Schiano

Apollonia von Ravenstein

Countess Carimati de Carimate

C.Z. Guest

Douchka Cizmek

Betsy Bloomingdale

Nancy Reagan

Jerry Zipkin

Adolfo

Dodie Rosekrans

It was cute of Dodie to send the chain letter, but Frannie knew she was beyond the cheering-up stage. That list of names, furthermore, depressed the matriarch more than all her other tribulations combined.

This desolation took tangible shape when she watched the afternoon movie on television: Susan Hayward in
Back Street.
Even Mary Ann Singleton’s perky mid-movie commentary on homemade refrigerator magnets failed to revive her sagging spirits.

She seemed like such a nice girl, that Mary Ann.

Couldn’t she at least have called back?

Or had she simply deduced the reason for Frannie’s call and chosen to ignore it?

Emma, of course, had been dead right.
Dead right.
An uncannily accurate choice of words.
DeDe was dead.
The first person to receive that news had been the last to accept it as the truth.

Now she accepted it.

DeDe was dead and Edgar was dead and Beauchamp was dead and Faust was dead and Frances Alicia Ligon Halcyon was utterly and inexorably alone in the world.

It was time to join her family.

I
T LOOKED, TO PRUE, LIKE A SCENE FROM A DINOSAUR
movie.

She was standing on a U-shaped ridge, peering down into the dark green center of the U—a primeval lake-turned-swamp ringed with tree ferns so large that she half expected a sixty-foot Gila monster to come lumbering into view.

Her Maud Frizons were killing her.

Still, she pressed on, following the path that led her deeper and deeper into the unpopulated regions of the park. “Vuitton,” she called. “Vuiiiitton.” If the wolfhound was there, she would know; he had never failed to respond to his name.

The swamp, she decided, was a bad idea. Most of the terrain around it was too open to be able to conceal her beloved dog. She chose instead a westerly route—at least, she
thought
it was west—and skirted the Paleolithic bowl until the landscape fanned out around her to form the rhododendron dell.

The flowers were almost gone. They lay against their dusty green-black foliage like a thousand cast-off corsages on the morning after the prom. Prue thought about that for a moment:
Like a thousand cast-off corsages on the morning after the prom.

That was really good. She dug her little notebook from her purse and made another notation. She was getting so much better at this writing business.

The asphalt eventually petered out. The path became whatever route she could weave for herself through the mammoth rhododendrons. Some of them were as big as small carousels. Hmm.
The rhododendrons were as big as small carousels as I continued my relentless search for my beloved …

The notebook came out again.

Then Prue plunged onward. “Vuitton … Vuitton.” Her ankle straps were almost more than she could take now, but she tried not to think about them. What a foolish mistake. She would just have to leave out the Maud Frizons when she wrote the story.

One of the rhododendrons repeated itself. Or maybe there were two rhododendrons with the same arrangement of dead blossoms. Wasn’t she still heading west? Had she veered off her course after taking the last note?

She looked for the sun. The sun would be west. She remembered that much from Camp Fire Girls.
I struggled to remember the training I had received as a Camp Fire Girl in Grass Valley.
Did they still have Camp Fire Girls? It made her sound awfully old, she realized.

Anyway, the sun wasn’t even visible; a thick summer fog had already settled over the park.

It was all too hopeless for words.

Vuitton had been missing for well over two weeks now. Even if he had managed to remain in the park, where would he have lived all that time? What would he have eaten? Where would he be safe from dognappers … or average citizens showing kindness to a lost dog …
or Cambodians?

If only she could find a clue, some tiny shred of evidence affirming Vuitton’s presence in this wilderness. She needed more than determination now: she needed a
sign.

And then she stepped in it.

She knew from experience how difficult it was to clean wolfhound poop off a pair of pumps. And
this
was wolfhound poop, pure and simple; this was Vuitton’s poop. Her heart surged with joy.

Looking about her in the dell, she tried to whistle but failed. “Vuitton,” she cried. “Mommy’s here, darling!”

She heard the rustle of dry leaves, subtle as a zephyr in the underbrush. Twenty feet away a carousel of dead corsages quivered ominously, then parted. Something pale appeared.
Like a newborn chick pecking out of a painted shell.

It was Vuitton!

“Vuitton, baby! Precious! Darling!”

But the wolfhound merely stood there, appraising her.

“Come on, sweetheart. Come to Mommy.”

The dog withdrew into the dying blossoms; the carousel slammed shut.

What on earth …?

Prue pushed her way into the shrub, ducking under its huge black branches until she emerged in a kind of clearing, bounded on the opposite side by a tangle of ivy and eucalyptus trees. Cream-colored fur flickered in the shadows.

“Vuitton, for God’s sake!”

The terrain dropped sharply. Vuitton was shimmying clumsily down a steep, sandy slope which ended in a cul-de-sac on an ivy-strangled ledge. There on the ledge stood a curious-looking shack.

And next to the shack stood a man.

He smiled up at the society columnist for
Western Gentry
magazine. “Got time for coffee?” he asked.

F
RANNIE HALCYON HEAVED A LONG SIGH OF SURRENDER
and reached for the pills on her bedside table.

They had been a birthday present, oddly enough, a sixtieth birthday present from Helena Parrish, the elegant proprietress of Pinus, a resort in the hills of Sonoma County where Frannie had spent several languorous weeks making a graceful passage into her senior years.

“They’re Vitamin Q,” Helena had explained, “and they’re good for what ails you.”

Even now, Frannie managed a thin smile at the thought of her earlier innocence. Vitamin Q, indeed. They were Quaaludes, what the young people called “downers.” She had taken maybe half-a-dozen of them during her days at Pinus, giving them up when she discovered they didn’t mix well with Mai Tais.

Well, now it didn’t matter.

She popped two of them into her mouth, washing them down with her Mai Tai. There were at least a dozen pills in the bottle, surely enough to put her out of her misery. She was about to swallow two more when she remembered an important detail.

“Emma!” she called.

She waited for the sound of the maid’s footsteps.

Nothing.

“EMMA!”

Finally, there was a shuffling noise in the hallway. Emma appeared at the door, holding a dust mop. “Yes’m?”

“Have you seen my rosary beads, dear?”

“No’m. Not lately.”

“I think they’re in the desk in the library. Would you check for me, please?”

“Yes’m.”

She was gone for several minutes, long enough for the matriarch to down two more Quaaludes and tidy up the bedclothes. Taking the beads from the old black woman, Frannie felt a great sadness sweep over her. She fought back the tears. “What would I do without you, Emma?”

And what would Emma do without her?

It was too late for that now, too late for turning back. Emma was handsomely provided for in Frannie’s will. That would just have to do. Still …

“You feelin’ poorly, Miss Frannie?”

Frannie refused to meet her companion’s eyes. The rosary beads had betrayed her. No one knew better than Emma that Frannie’s commitment to the church was minimal. “I’m fine, dear. Really. I just want to say a little prayer for Miss DeDe.”

Emma didn’t budge. “You sure?”

“Yes, dear. Now leave me alone for a while, will you?”

Emma looked around the room, as if searching for evidence to refute the matriarch’s statement. (The Quaaludes were hidden under Frannie’s pillow.) Then the maid sighed, shook her head, and trudged out of the room.

As Frannie reached for the pills, the phone rang.

She thought for a moment. If she didn’t answer it, Emma would take the call and return to the bedroom with the message. So she reached for the phone, hoping to eliminate this final obstacle to her departure.

“Hello.” Her voice sounded sluggish to her. She felt as if she were speaking in a dream.

“Who is this, please?” asked the voice on the other end.

“This is … who is
this?”

“Mother? Oh God, Mother!”

“Wha …?”

“It’s DeDe, Mother! Thank God I got …”

“DeDe?” It
was
a dream … or a hallucination … or a wicked prank perpetrated by one of those sick minds that … but that voice,
that voice.
“DeDe, baby … is it you?”

She heard loud sobs on the other end. “Oh Mother, I’m sorry! Please forgive me! I’m safe! The children are safe! We’re O.K., understand? We’re coming home just as soon as we can!”

Now Frannie had begun to wail, so loudly in fact that Emma rushed into the room.

“Miss Frannie, what on earth …?”

“It’s Miss DeDe, Emma! Our baby’s coming home. Precious baby’s coming home! DeDe …
DeDe, are you there?”

“I’m here, Mother.”

“Thank God! But
where,
darling?”

“Uh … Arkansas.”

“Arkansas?
What on earth are you doing there?”

“They’re holding me here. At Fort Chaffee. Can you mail me a credit card or something?”

“Who’s
holding you? Not … oh God, not those Jonestown people?”

“No, Mother. The government. The American government. I’m at the settlement camp for gay Cuban refugees.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story, Mother.”

“Well, tell them to let you out, for heaven’s sake! Tell them who you are! Tell them there’s been a mistake, DeDe!”

A long pause, and then:

“You don’t understand, Mother.
I am a
gay Cuban refugee.”

M
ICHAEL HAD SEEN IT A DOZEN TIMES, BUT THE
sign on the pathway to Lands End never failed to give him a delicious shudder:
CAUTION—CLIFF AND SURF AREA EXTREMELY DANGEROUS—
People have been swept from the rocks and drowned.

“I love that thing,” he told Mary Ann and Brian as the trio passed the signpost. “It’s so … Daphne DuMaurier. ‘People have been swept from the rocks and drowned.’ It’s almost lyrical. Where else but here could you find a government sign painter with poetry in his soul?”

Mary Ann studied the sign for a moment, then continued the trek down the railroad tie stairs. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I agree with you.”

“So do I,” added Brian, “and I’m not as loaded as you guys.”

“It’s because we’re all Jeanettes,” explained Michael. “Jeanettes always notice that sort of thing.”

Mary Ann shot him a wary glance. “I’m afraid to ask.”

Michael grinned. “Just a new theory of mine. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are really only two types of people
in San Francisco, regardless of race, creed, color or … what’s the other one?”

“Sexual orientation,” said Brian.

“Thank you,” said Michael.

Mary Ann rolled her eyes. “So what are they?”

“Jeanettes,” answered Michael, “and Tonys. Jeanettes are people who think that the city’s theme song is ‘San Francisco’ as sung by Jeanette MacDonald. Tonys think it’s Tony Bennett singing ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’ Everyone falls into one camp or another … in a manner of speaking.”

Brian’s brow wrinkled in thought. “That makes sense, but it’s always subject to change. Mary Ann used to be a Tony, for instance. Some people don’t know …”

“I was
never
a Tony.” Mary Ann was quietly indignant.

“Sure you were,” said Brian breezily. “I remember. You had a Pet Rock, for God’s sake.”

“Brian, that was Connie Bradshaw and you know it.”

“Well, it’s the same thing. You lived with her. The Pet Rock was on your premises.”

Mary Ann sought Michael’s support.
“He’s
the one who picked her up in a laundromat, and I get the lecture on taste.” She turned back to Brian. “If I remember correctly, you were still calling women ‘chicks’ when I met you.”

“You remember correctly,” said Brian.

“Well?”

Brian shrugged. “Women still
were
chicks when you met me.”

“Which reminds me,” said Mary Ann, ignoring his deliberate piggery. “Would you watch it with the naked ladies this time?”

“Hey,” Brian protested. “All I did was
talk
to them. How was I supposed to know they were dykes?”

“You weren’t,” said Mary Ann.

“Hell,” added Brian. “It all evens out, anyway. Most of the guys down there must think I’m gay.”

Michael smiled. “Or wish you were.”

For San Francisco, it was a scorcher, a day when half the population called in sick to the other half. Some of them came here to recover, here to a secret, sun-drenched cove where they stripped off their clothes and offered up their cocoa buttered bodies to The Goddess.

The beach would have been an odd sight from the air. It was checkerboarded with dozens of tiny stone forts, makeshift windbreaks accommodating anywhere from two to ten sun-worshipers in varying stages of undress.

Michael called it The Breastworks.

Today, the three of them had a fort all to themselves. Mary Ann and Brian sunbathed bare-chested but with bottoms; Michael took off everything, having finally decided that tan lines went out with The Seventies.

The celebrants lay in silence for several minutes. Mary Ann was the first to speak.

“Maybe this would do.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” said Brian.

“I mean, as a story. I need a really hot feature idea if I’m ever gonna get liberated from
Bargain Matinee.”

“You need more than that,” said Brian.

“Besides,” added Michael, “nude beaches are old stuff. They’ve been done to death.”

“You’re right,” sighed Mary Ann. “What about S & M?”

“Not right now,” said Brian. “I just put the Coppertone on.”

“That’s even more tired,” said Michael. “Whenever these local stations see their ratings flagging they do another exposé on S & M. It’s like earthquake stories or Zodiac letters. Anything to keep the public spooked.”

“The problem,” remarked Mary Ann, “is that you can’t really plan it. The really big San Francisco stories just drop out of nowhere without warning.”

“Like Guyana,” added Brian.

“Or Burke and those cannibals at Grace Cathedral.” This interjection was Michael’s, and he regretted it instantly. Mary Ann’s old boyfriend, Burke Andrew, was now an associate editor at
New York
magazine. Brian appeared to be jealous of the long-dead relationship, so Mary Ann and Michael usually avoided mentioning it in his presence.

Mary Ann changed the subject by interrogating Michael. “So you’re off to________’s house on Memorial Day weekend?”

Michael nodded. “I’ll never be tan enough.”

“Maybe he’ll come out,” mused Mary Ann, “and offer me an exclusive on the story.”

“Uh-huh,” said Michael. “And maybe the sky will fall.”